The invention concerns a food product in sheet, ribbon or filament form consisting of at least two components which have been coextruded to become interspersed with each other and form a row-structure, and methods and apparatus for making such product.
In the term “food” product, I intend to include animal food, confectionary and medical products. The inventor's two (expired) patents U.S. Pat. No. 4,115,502 and WO-A-4,436,568 disclose such products. The former discloses:
strands of a viscous sugar solution, interspersed with strands of dough; and coextruded sheet formed product is subsequently baked—and;
b) strands of highly viscous, dissolved or swollen protein and a viscous sugar solution, caramel and/or dough; the coextruded sheet formed product is subsequently solidified (see col. 6 line 65 to col. 7 line 5 of this patent).
The other above mentioned patent contains an operative example for making a similar food product namely example 4. Here an alkaline solution of soya protein is interspersedly, side-by-side coextruded with a solution of carboxy-methyl-cellulose to which is added caramel (for sweetening and aroma). To achieve a regular structure the two solutions have the same viscosity.
The coextruded sheet formed product is collected on a conveyor film of polyester (later to be used as wrap for the product) and is solidified by rinsing a solution of NaCl-lactic acid over it. This causes the protein to coagulate.
In each of the above mentioned examples each of the interspersed strands is a continuous strand. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,436,568 this clearly appears from the text of the example when the latter is studied in conjunction with the drawing to which it refers. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,115,502 the only apparatus/method which is disclosed for interspersed coextrusion—see FIG. 4 and connected description—will always produce continuous strands. EP-A0653285 and WO-A-9934695 concern different methods of coextruding food components as a multiplicity of layer, one on top of the other, and each patent gives examples of suitable components for such structures.